


Feeling

by lydiduh



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Canonical Character Death, Creamsicle - Freeform, Drugs, Established Relationship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Vignette, toothpick bitchslap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 13:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3122399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lydiduh/pseuds/lydiduh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of unrelated vignettes, mostly Vic/Eddie but with a random smattering of Freddy/Larry at the end because it had nowhere else to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feeling

Sometimes, Vic is almost normal. Okay, maybe not _normal_ , just predictable since Eddie's spent so much time around him. Other times, Eddie thinks there's something uncomfortably-- _investigative_ about the way Vic treats him, just under the surface. Like he's somehow trying to figure out how he would take Eddie apart and put him together again.

One time, they're both drunk, making out on the couch, everything going fine until Vic pulls away all of a sudden with that scary, unreadable look in his eyes, his hand still making absent figure eights against the soft flesh of Eddie's chest. Eddie is hit with a memory of Vic, 16 years old, hunched over the body of the cat he'd drunkenly hit while they were joyriding in one of Joe's antique cars. Vic was doing much the same thing to the dying animal's exposed chest cavity then-- running his fingers around the blood and still-pumping organs, eyes bright while Eddie stood on the sidelines with his face buried in his sleeve, called him sick, shouted at him to either call a vet or put it out of its misery. After what felt like an eternity, Vic had opted for the latter, a sharp motion of his boot against the cat's head.

The crunch rings loud in Eddie's head now, and he's panicking and hitting Vic on the shoulder until he gets off of him. When his senses come back, Vic is staring at him from the foot of the bed like a reproachful dog and he feels awful.

 

\---

 

Vic stares around his prison cell from his bunk, feeling uncharacteristically small and aimless for the first time in years. So this was it. Would be it for a long, long time. He'd been here before-- a few months here and there for petty shoplifting shit before Joe hired him properly-- but never for this hopelessly long. Seven years. Nobody would visit him. Nobody could visit him without raising suspicion-- nobody that he would want to see, anyway.

Another inmate shuffles past his cell, here to see the rumored new meat who was supposed to look "like James Dean but bigger."

"You got a problem?" Vic asks after a long minute of silent gawking, his voice calm.

"You look like you'd give some good head, baby," the inmate wheezes with a lopsided grin, hands wrapping around the bars of the cell. The impulse to reach through those bars and rattle the guy's head against them until there's nothing left of his face is so immediate, would be so _easy_ and feel so good right now that Vic is already standing up and taking a step before his voice of reason-- which is weak to the point of barely-there and usually ignored, but sounds an awful lot like Eddie-- stops him. He's _not_ going to start fights. He's going to be a goddamn model inmate. He's going to do his time like he likes it and get an early parole for good behavior, a full-on rehabilitated member of society. He could be back out in four years if he plays his cards right, and that still seems like an impossibly long time, but shit, it's better than nothing. It's something. Dragging up a wealth of self-control that he hadn't even suspected himself of having, Vic steps away from the other guy, folds himself back up on his bunk and waits.

 

\---

 

Vic gets Joe's first package two months into his prison stay, at right about the point he was starting to really go crazy. There's a carton of cigarettes, some much-needed grooming supplies, and... this month's Playboy magazine. Confused, Vic picks up the magazine, thumbs through it, and blinks as something falls out of it. The strip of stupid photobooth pictures he'd taken with Eddie last year. Understanding now, he snorts out a laugh and quickly tucks the pictures under the sheets of his bed before anyone else sees them. He gives the magazine an experimental shake, and a flutter of papers fall out of it this time. Gathering them together, he runs a finger over a word he recognizes right away as _Toothpick_. It's obviously Eddie's handwriting, all sharp-angled scrawls that get mixed up hopelessly in Vic's head, and there's three pages here filled top to bottom. It's going to take him forever to read it.

"Read this for me," Vic says out loud.

"Huh?" his cellmate, a junkie named Richards who was balding pathetically despite being barely older than Vic, replies blearily from the top bunk.

"This," Vic says, holding out the letter as gruffly as possible, trying to figure out the most butch way to ask another grown man to read something to you like a goddamn bedtime story.

"Seriously?"

"Do I look like I'm fucking joking."

Richards blinks slowly and takes the letter from Vic and looks at it. "Christ, this girl's got really shitty handwriting," he says after a minute.

"Didn't ask for a fucking review, just read it for me and keep your mouth shut about it and I'll give you the Playboy."

 

\---

 

Eddie's barely spent five minutes away from Vic since Vic came home from the slammer; propriety be damned, they barely found the strength to put effort into being covert. Any mission Joe sends Eddie on is immediately countered with a "Can Vic come?" and valiant attempts at swaying Joe's mind if the answer is anything but Yes.

He'd lost the fight today; Eddie thumps his fingers anxiously against the steering wheel at a stoplight and mouths along to the stupid Blue Swede song that he'd never liked while the sharp needle of Pink's voice jabs him over and over in the back of the head, babbling about black bitches and white bitches. Larry laughs far too often in the seat next to him-- he'd insisted on coming with them to pick up Pink and the new kid, and Eddie loves the guy enough but boy he can get irritating when he's in a good mood and you aren't, particularly since it was his coming along that'd knocked Vic out of the lineup. The new kid-- "Mr. Orange"-- doesn't say anything for a good chunk of the ride; every time Eddie catches a glance of him he's either staring quietly at his lap or forward at the bobbing back of Larry's head.

"Gotta go along with Mr. Pink on that one, I've seen it happen," he pipes up eventually as his mind latches back on to the conversation happening around him.

 

\---

 

Eddie wakes up first, he always wakes up first, even when there's no good reason for it. He's still tangled up in Vic's arms, and knows that if he tried to make an escape to get his day started before noon they would just clench tighter around him like a pair of needy boa constrictors. Not that he really wants to escape, not yet at least. Instead, he runs his hand's over Vic's broad chest, still acquainting himself with the changes in the other boy's body. New muscles, new scars, new lines. The smell of cigarettes and aftershave and just _Vic_ is finally replacing the dull, unclean stench of prison that had clung stubbornly to him for several days after he got home. 

Vic, on the other hand, has been brutal about Eddie softening from "un-athletic" to "husky" over the past four years, but in the same breath can't seem to keep his hands off of him either, grabbing greedy mouthfuls of Eddie's neck, shoulders, chest, legs, whenever he can get them. Eddie wonders if there was some truth to his accusation that Vic has spent too long with only the sharp, angular bodies of fellow inmates to keep him company, but doesn't voice it in favor of simply enjoying the sudden enthusiastic attention from the man he's missed for so long.

 

\---

 

The theory had always been that Vic would protect Eddie, but Eddie has always privately felt the reverse was more accurate. He'd devoted half his life now to making sure Vic didn't fall asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Patiently repeating plans to him as many times as it took for Vic to understand his part in them. Taking over situations where Vic was getting overloaded for one reason or another, and usually subtly enough that Vic didn't catch on to get insulted. Not three fucking hours ago he was dragging Vic out of bed, setting his suit out for him, tying his tie because they didn't have five minutes for Vic to do it himself and have the knot pop up on him anyway--

And now, one bad decision later, Eddie's staring his own failure in the face, or rather in Vic's mangled chest.

"What the _fuck_ happened?"

 

\---

 

Jim Holdaway is standing above of an ocean of blood-- a fucking _unbelievable_ amount of blood-- the tips of his shoes almost brushing its congealed edge on the concrete floor. As he looks down at the scene, eyes prickling with tears, he feels a world of suspicions he'd thought too outrageous to even give voice to come collapsing down around him. He knew Freddy should've been taken off the job-- _knew_ it, Hell, probably never should've been on it in the first place. But God _Damn_ , he was doing so well, they were _so_ close to taking down Cabot, closer than they'd ever been before. He should've-- he would've-- he could've--

Freddy's arms are still looped weakly around the elbows of the man-- Cabot's man-- who had apparently pulled them together shortly before the shootout. There isn't much left to talk about of Freddy's face, blown out from bottom to top by the .44 currently being taken into evidence. Hair matted with blood and falling in scraggly strands over one eye that was still screwed shut, remaining teeth half-clenched in awful anticipation of an action that had already happened. The other man's face has been spared by the bullets, though, and even contorted in pain Jim easily recognizes him from the mugshot he'd talked over with Freddy a few weeks ago. Mr. White. Laurence Dimmick. Mr. We-Fucking-Talked A Little. His hand is still gentle on Freddy's ruined face.

"Son of a bitch, Freddy," he exhales shakily, too quiet to hear, and pulls his eyes away from the scene. "Son of a bitch."

 


End file.
